The Nao Santa Maria… and Gauging Portuguese Carracks to 16th Century Macao

Posted: June 29th, 2026 | No Comments »

Found time, on a boiling hot day, to visit the replica of the Santa Maria which tours Europe stopping off at ports and harbours to let visitors aboard. It happened to be at Eastbourne (East Sussex) and has now moved on to Shoreham (near Brighton) and who knows where after that.

The Santa María was the largest of the three Spanish ships (alongside the Niña and Pinta) used by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage across the Atlantic. The ship ran aground off Haiti on Christmas Day in 1492.

What interested me was that the Santa Maria was a nao (or carrack), making it highly similar to Portuguese vessels of the era that made it to Macao by the 1500s. Portugal and Spain shared nearly identical Iberian shipbuilding traditions, and naos were the standard, ocean-going, round-hulled ships used throughout the “Age of Discovery”. Portuguese naos sailed to Macao during the 16th and 17th centuries. They navigated the treacherous Cape of Good Hope, connecting Lisbon to Goa, Malacca, and eventually Macao and the Pearl River Delta. By the mid-1550s naos hag gotten significantly larger, but not that much that the Santa Maria is not perhaps an interesting visit to gauge the sort of vessels the Portuguese used to get as far as China and on the initial “black ships” trade with Japan.

Anyway, here’s some shots of the Santa Maria.

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